Coming Out and Going Home
Hey, y’all! How goes it? First and foremost, I want to thank Andrew for hosting me on his blog. He is one of my favorite people on earth and I love him more than I love my luggage (trust me, it’s a compliment – I have purple luggage with green olives. I adore it).
I was sitting and pondering life how much mine has changed in the last few years.
I’ve moved. We’ve lost Julia’s dad. I came out of the closet. We have our first grandnephew, my baby-iest sister got married. J and I are engaged and house hunting for our first place that we both chose.
Good things. Bad things. All sorts of things.
One of the biggest things that has happened, though, was when I left Texas.
Me.
I’m a Longhorn, I bleed burnt orange. My pappy picked cotton in Hunt County. My daddy is a cowboy – and y’all, when I say that, Daddy raises cattle (and llamas and horses), he doesn’t go outside without a hat, he drives a truck and yes, there’s a shotgun in the gun rack. When I buy him smelly candles to impress the ladies in his life, he asks for leather-scented and he wears the same pair of elephant-skin boots that have been his dress boots since I can remember. I say y’all, all y’all, and y’all ladies. I have bluebonnets tattooed on one arm and stars on the other. Texas is, and always will be, where I call home.
Still…
One day, not too long ago, my girl came to be and asked me to come to New Mexico. Come to the desert. Please, she said, and I went.
I went because I love her, I went because I loved her dad. I also came because, when we stopped being ‘roommates’ and ‘business partners’, things at home changed. People that I love dearly looked at me and said, “you can’t stay here” and “can’t you just be quiet?” and “are you serious? Why would you want to get married? Do you have to case trouble?”
The answer to that question is yes.
I’m serious.
I love her.
I want to marry her.
I want to hold her hand and call her ‘babe’ in the grocery store and know that we have some legal protection because “after all, she’s not REAL family”.
Causing trouble hasn’t ever been one of my worries. After all, I’m a pink-haired, tattooed lesbian who writes gay romance for a living. Why on earth would that cause trouble?
It’s taken me a few years to work this out with myself. A few years and a book.
The Terms of Release is the product of me working my shit out. Taking the pain of loving a place because you can’t imagine not being there and knowing that being there is the last possible thing you need and letting Sage and Win be the heroes of a story that’s mine and not mine at all, all at once.
The Terms of Release is releasing March 24, 2014 from Dreamspinner Press and I’m proud enough to bust.
Official Blurb:
They say a man can always come home. So after doing hard time, Sage Redding heads to his family’s northeast Texas ranch to help his ailing daddy with the cutting horses.
Adam (Win) Winchester is a county deputy and the cousin of one of the men killed in the incident that sent Sage to prison for almost a decade. While Win’s uncles, Jim and Teddy, are determined to make Sage and the entire Redding family pay for their loss, Win just figures Sage has paid his dues and maybe needs a friend. Maybe he needs more than a friend. In fact, Win’s counting on it.
No one’s denying Sage is an ex-con who went to prison for manslaughter. Regardless of the love he has for his father, he’s returned knowing things will likely go badly for him. Maybe a man can always come home, but he may not be able to stay.
Paperback buy link (first 20 copies come signed): http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4820
Ebook buy link:
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4776
Where to find BA:
http://www.batortuga.com — website
batortuga.blogspot.com – blog
@batortuga on twitter
https://www.facebook.com/batortuga